Dragon Age: The Veilguard from BioWare and EA is one of the biggest games set to launch this fall. It will mark the first new game in the fantasy RPG series in a decade and hopefully be a single-player return to form for BioWare after the ill-regarded Anthem. If you’re planning to play Dragon Age: The Veilguard when it launches later this year, you should catch up on the series’ lore by revisiting some of the older games in it. Thankfully, the PlayStation Store Summer Sale just gave you the perfect opportunity to get Dragon Age: Inquisition for quite a low price.
For the rest of July, Dragon Age: Inquisition — Game of the Year Edition, which includes the 50+ hour-long RPG and all of its DLC, is discounted to just $4 on the PlayStation Store as part of this Summer Sale. That’s a 90% discount from its typical $40 price tag. If you’ve been wondering what to pick up as part of PlayStation’s big summer sale and plan on playing Dragon Age: The Veilguard later this year, then getting Dragon Age: Inquisition and all its DLC for just $4 is clearly the deal to go with.
Dragon Age: Inquisition begins with the player being the lone survivor of an explosion at The Conclave that also caused a breach in the Veil that surrounds the world of Thedas. After quelling the breach’s expansion, they start to be thought of as a chosen one and become a figurehead of an inquisition fighting to close the breaches in the veil. From there, Inquisition is a world-trotting RPG adventure where players are constantly meeting new people, recruiting party members, and making a lot of choices that shape the course of the game’s narrative. It’s classic BioWare through and through.
From what I’ve seen of The Veilguard, it has some clear connective tissue to Inquisition. Party members from Inquisition, like Solas and Varric, have significant roles in The Veilguard‘s opening hour. Harding, a dwarf side character from Inquisition, will also be a full-on party member in its sequel. While you’ll probably be OK jumping straight into The Veilguard when it launches later this year, playing Inquisition first will better ease you into the world of Thedas and introduce you to all of these characters beforehand.
As players venture out to rebuild and grow the titular inquisition, they find several open-ended areas to explore. Its gameplay and visuals also haven’t aged as poorly as the other two Dragon Age titles. The different locales players visit over the course of the adventure are vibrant and full of gorgeous vistas. All of your actions out in these open worlds feed back into the growth of the inquisition as well, giving this RPG a visible sense of rewarding progression outside of character stats going up.
Combat is more action-focused but still finds ways to incorporate magical abilities and deeper RPG systems into confrontations. Even a decade after its release, Inquisition has aged quite well and offers up dozens of hours of enjoyment. Even if you’ve played it before, using a different class and specialization or just making different narrative choices throughout the game can offer up a completely different experience than you had the first time through. Plus, the Game of the Year Edition comes with all of Inquisition’s DLC, some of which you may have not played before.
This is definitely one of BioWare’s most ambitious games in terms of scale, yet it’s also an adventure it hasn’t been able to top since. Mass Effect Andromeda felt less polished and details than games like Mass Effect 3 and Inquisition, while Anthem fell short as an RPG because of its misguided and ultimately unfulfilled multiplayer live-service elements. Nearly a decade after its release, Inquisition is still the lofty standard that the studio is trying to return to with The Veilguard, so revisiting this 2014 classic makes sense if you want a better idea of the bar BioWare needs to meet with the next entry in the series. At just $4, this is an easy recommendation and one of the best deals on offer in 2024’s PlayStation Store Summer Sale.
The PS4 version of Dragon Age: Inquisition — Game of the Year Edition will cost just $4 on the PlayStation Store until 11:59 p.m. PT on July 31. If you’re an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscriber, you can also revisit this game on PC or Xbox One through the EA Play catalog.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.